Speed bumps are not only costly to manufacture and mount on roadway surfaces, but additionally have limited life in their resident sites on a road surface subject to deterioration from vehicle impact, weather conditions and other environmental impact. Prior art construction techniques, for example, are not compatible with a wide range of specified road constructions including brick, asphalt and concrete surfaces, which deteriorate with weather and catastrophic damage in use. Nor can they be non-destructively removed for reuse, such as when taken up during winter seasons when surfaces freeze and when snow plows would damage them. In particular they are deficient in confronting heavy load impacts incurred from approaching heavy vehicles at high speeds without accelerated damage and deterioration.
Prior art speed bumps are primarily non-flexible attachments permanently affixed in place on previously prepared road surfaces, typically along low speed limit residential streets, to encourage passing motorists to reduce speeds. Particularly when asphalt speed bumps are affixed in place by reworking road surfaces integrally, they cannot be temporarily removed and reused in the event of later road surface improvements or during wintertime, and the cost of resurfacing the road is prohibitive.
Critical non-resilient impact surfaces for intercepting oncoming vehicle tires are subject to catastrophic failure and short life cycles, and any attempts at making impact surfaces resilient have added disproportionate costs and inconveniences to make their use impractical.
Prior art speed bump costs including material costs, handling costs, assembly costs and installation costs are excessive, particularly when complex assemblies of various units and extensive roadway modifications are encountered. The bulky size of the speed bumps make it impractical and costly to mold and handle ready to install speed bump units made from molded plastics, for example.
One prior art attempt to produce flexible speed bump parts from molded plastics such as recycled crumb rubber products members is known in the prior art as shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,294, Oct. 6, 1987 by Hartmut Schafer for SPEED BUMPS FOR ROADWAYS. Therein a series of separate plates, including ramp plates and spacer plates are assembled together on a roadway surface in a pattern either by screwing several adjacent plates directly onto a roadway surface or by providing screwed-in-place inter plate connectors between the adjacent plates. To absorb impact from oncoming vehicle tires, the ramp plates are reinforced by metal reinforcing members cast into the ramp plates. The speed bump thus positions an elevated pattern of intermediate interconnecting elevated cast plastic plates between leading and trailing inclined wedge plates.
Deficiencies of the prior art speed bump configurations in general use include the inability to non-destructively remove the bumps ready for reuse, for example during winter conditions where frost and snow plow damage is incurred. Furthermore, non-resilient impact surfaces on the speed bumps which interface with impacting vehicle tires are subject to damage and have limited life cycles, particularly in the presence of high impact force heavy-weight vehicles such as trucks.
Also the cost of installed speed bumps, including the road surface preparation, as well as costs of the raw materials and processing of the raw materials into speed bump configurations, is critical, as well as the special construction, road preparation and maintenance costs of roadway surfaces. For example, a speed bump should be compatible for use on either asphalt or concrete roadway surfaces and must be available in various custom specified heights, lengths and widths. Thus, the in-situ construction in installing asphalt bumps on asphalt road surfaces, for example, may easily result in short life cycles, catastrophic failures and non-uniformity in meeting and controlling custom specifications that are usually demanded by the respective highway authorities.